Completion feels GREAT!!

 So I was just going to do a quick post with these two preview pictures and then post the great pictures with the big reveal, but Blogger wasn't working and I am so excited about my flowers, I'm going to post them anyway and just let you know later how it all pans out.

 The theme for the sugar flower entries this year was Fantasy Flowers. So I decided to really play up the colors. It turned out pretty well. I got ALOT of practice. This took me about three solid days of working from morning until late lunch, while the kiddos were napping, and then again when they went to bed (so only stopping for lunch and late afternoon/dinnertime). I am SO glad for it to be done! My fingers have blisters from wrapping so many stems! I forgot to do final counts before putting everything together, but here is what I know: 60 leaves, 5 roses, 10 carnations, 15 mums, 2  lilies (12 petals and 6 leaves), and then not quite sure how many red/black blossoms (I think around 30)

 And here is the back of the finished product.

 The front

 Side 1

 Side 2

And a top view. Pictures don't do this justice (esp with my crappy camera that can't focus worth a darn), but you get the idea and I hope it does well at the fair. But I have no idea since I've never entered before. But at least I tried and I am excited and proud of my work! Wish me luck as I try to transport it all the way down to Blackfoot (45 mins away) and hope we don't have any misshaps! :)

Enjoying the Lull

Sorry no posts this week, we really haven't been doing much except enjoying the last of the warm weather and the lull in between things. Robert finished grain harvest, but starts killing potatoes on Monday. At least spud harvest (so the really super long hours) doesn't start for a few weeks yet.

We were able to go visit a friend who had a new baby, play with friends, and last night I took Sam to an outside movie someone in the ward did as an end-of-summer party. They rented a projector and big blow-up screen and watched "The Lorax" (good movie if you haven't seen it). He loved it! Robert stayed home with Amy, which was really good since it was super late (for her) and because of the wind it was quite chilly.

Also this week I finally decided to do an entry for the state fair next week. I will be doing sugar flowers. The theme is fantasy flowers, so I am going to have alot of fun with color - hopefully it will go as planned, though! So that is what the picture above is all about. While Sam went and played with some friends in the ward, I got a start on the many, many leaves I will need to make and I was able to color all of my gumpaste. Now I need to make the bases for the roses, carnations, and mums so they can dry over the weekend and I can get crankin'.

I also am making cupcakes for our ward birthday party tonight and a German chocolate cake for a friend's birthday tomorrow. We get next week and then Grandma and Kurtis come back to visit, Jake and Stacey return for school, and Sam starts preschool. Oh how the time flies!

Something for Kaylie

 Our local grocery store had a huge fundraiser to support Primary Children's Medical Center this last Saturday, so we decided to join in. I don't know why, but when I saw the posters for the 5K race, I knew that we needed to do this for Kaylie and that I wanted to do it with my two kids. I know, crazy, right? But we did indeed do it despite the early hour (meaning grumpy kids) and lack of training. We somehow made it to the end with only a few trips running back for Sam for various reasons.

 I was able to find us all grey shirts and spent way too much time the night before printing, tracing, cutting, ironing, and painting the "Team Kaylie" onto the back of each of them. But it felt good to do something together for our angel up in heaven and I thought about her alot as I ran. After the race we went home and changed so we could hit up the 25 cent sale at the consignment store in Rexburg. This is such a sweet deal! Every item they have out is a quarter! And this time around I was able to find stuff for all of us and even some for my sister and her kiddos. At 25 cents a pop, why not?!

Then we headed home for lunch and naps (which we all needed desperately). After we got up, we went back to the local grocery store in hopes of being there for the raffle drawing to see if we won any of the cool prizes. Turns out they didn't do it when they said they were going to. But Sam got to throw balls to dunk an employee, get his face painted with a spider and web, and jump in the bouncy house. Then we headed over to the Early Iron car show. It has been the Jefferson County Fair this week and the grand finale is a car show of all sorts of cars, trucks, tractors, bikes, etc. The kids liked it pretty well and we really enjoyed getting a jump start on fair food by enjoying funnel cake topped with strawberries. It was a long, full, fun day! And we ended it the best with a trip to Sam's Club with Daddy for dinner and a new movie ("Hunger Games"!!)

*Sidenote* I did decide at the very last second to enter the "Death by Chocolate" contest that I won last year with my Almost-Too-Much-Chocolate cake. I decided since it was free to enter and I had some cookies left over from Book Group, I would go ahead and try. They were my Ande's Mint Cookies. I think they are to die for. But apparently it is quite difficult to surpass chocolate cake with chocolate cookies or candies because only cake entries won the top awards. Next year I will just do the cake again.

YW Bag

 I know, ANOTHER post from me. I've been a little post crazy lately. Oh well. I really wanted to share this with you because I am quite proud of myself. Ever since being called in to the YW, I have struggled to carry everything we need for church in our one bag. So I decided I would solve this problem by making myself a super cute bag just for YW stuff. I found the fabrics fairly easy and they have been sitting down in my craft room for over a month now waiting to be used.

Today being Saturday I had quite alot of time to fill with Daddy working, no swimming lessons, no errands to run and no one to do a playdate with since most people consider it a family day. This morning me and the kids super cleaned the house, which was good because it hasn't been really cleaned since before Girl's Camp. Then, while the kidlets took nice long naps (thanks to both not sleeping well last night) I decided to get to work on my bag. I got my inspiration from a Make-It & Love-It project and our current church bag I won at an auction to support our library. There are a few things that I would like to tweak next time: how to finish the bottom so there is no seam, how to do the squared-off bottom, and figure out how to get the batting and layers of fabric to all stick to each other. But some things turned out really well, too. I was proud of myself for figuring out how to do the pockets on the inside of the bag without seams showing (something I have in the other bag, but the tutorial I was following didn't). And just how it came together was super awesome. I had also found some yellow fabric with tiny white flowers all over it I was going to incorporate, but I just couldn't see how it would fit, so I left it off for now. I'm considering making a fabric flower or something to designate the front from the back and maybe that is where I could use that? A fun and much-needed project to get me back on track!

A Little More

 Ok, so here are a few more pictures from adding decor to our house. Another quote in vinyl that I thought would be perfect for the guest bedroom. (and yes, that is a pile of clean sheets sitting on the bed waiting to be put on) The quote is on a mirror from the dollar store, which give it a really cool look (vinyl on a mirror).

 Then I wanted to show you how our family wall looks now that we have the new family pictures up along with the new vinyl. If I could just find the right shelves I want for either side, this wall would be complete. Someday.

 Then here are a couple pictures of how I did Amy's hair the other day. We have fallen into a bad habit of only doing her hair in two styles. And we only style it every other day (if we don't have anything going on) to give her head a break and to remind me that she really does have hair. And beautiful angel hair, too.

But the other day on Pinterest someone found a post by a lady who had a baby with not alot of hair. Still way more than Amy's, but not enough to do all the fancy, cute things you see out there for little girls. Her post gave me a handful of good ideas to try so I don't get so frustrated. Those front ponys sure were hard and I'm sure her head was sore by the end of the day! And besides the fact that they aren't perfect, I like this look alot! I even had a lady stop me at DI not only to compliment Amy's hair, but also how hard it must have been to do it! So I hope to continue this on of making more of an effort to try new things with Amy's hair to keep it up and out of the way and to find hairstyles that keep ALL the hair in all day (that is our biggest issue with the old hairstyles; by the end of the day only a bit of hair was still in the pony)

More Vinyl Decorating

 So these pictures are mainly for my mother-in-law to see how the vinyl we cut turned out in the various spaces. But it's fun to share the little bit of house decorating I do with you guys as well. Up top is the new "Families are forever" because I found a font I liked so much better. It is more swirly and a little thinner, but I love it!

 Next is a quote for that large, empty family room downstairs. This vinyl is actually in dark brown, but it's hard to tell in the picture. Don't know what else I am going to do with all of that dead space downstairs. Probably just leave it like I have done everywhere else.

 Then the stickers we had gotten from Walmart for our mailbox had faded to black, which doesn't work well with a black mailbox. By luck we had bought a sheet of white outdoor vinyl to do something for a friend of mine, so we used the leftover to make a snazzy new name and address for our mailbox. It looks fabulous!!

And then just a quick picture of the amazing sunset last night as I was out putting the vinyl on the mailbox. The sun was actually quite a bit redder than this, but it still looks super pretty.

Bear World Adventures

 We've been to Bear World once before - when Grandma was visiting and we only had Sam. So we decided to use our 50% off cards and make a quick trip before swimming lessons and before Grandma and Uncle Kurtis had to head home. First off is the albino elk - very large head of antlers there.

Next, just one shot of the many bears we saw in the park including ones lazily strolling along the road and three or four surrounding one of the workers in a little Razor! It was great to get to see so many this time!

 Out the back window a quick shot of the wolves/coyotes that were in with the bears and for some reason were howling when we drove by. Pretty creepy!

 At the entrance to the gift shop, which you have to pass through to get to see 

the baby bears, the petting zoo, and the mini amusement park.

How the youngsters measure up against a full-grown Grizzly.

 I love how this picture turned out! Even though Amy isn't in real good, it turned out super cute!

 A beautiful swan.

 Turkey that was gobbling

A deer licking Sam's hand through the fence. But once we got inside we learned that this particular deer likes to eat people's clothes, or at least blue ones because that is what both Grandma and Uncle Kurtis were wearing :)

 Reaching really far to try and pet the little deer. 

These little guys were pretty skittish around people and not too open to being pet.

 Love this one! Amy finally warmed up to Uncle Kurty over the weekend, it was great to see them together!

A beautiful pea hen.

 Happy all around

Two baby bears play/fighting

And the race cars

 The tree ride (which just kinda gently took them up and down) there was also a roller coaster sort of ride that Amy absolutely LOVED. And thanks to Uncle Kurtis and Grandma for being such good sports and riding on the little kiddie rides with the babes.

It was really sad to see them go, but both will be back at the beginning of next month for Uncle Kurtis to start school in Rexburg. And then we will see Grandma and Grandpa in November for Thanksgiving here at our house!! We went straight to swimming lessons, then the free lunch, then errands in Idaho Falls. The poor kids were wiped out (ok, so maybe I was, too). Hope you all have a great week living it up before school starts again!

Crazy Weekend

 We have had a crazy busy week/weekend, but that just follows suit with the rest of our summer, doesn't it? We got home from our trip to Utah when we took my brothers home and visited with my parents on Tuesday. Then Thursday Robert's mom and little brother, Kurtis, came to visit. Friday was our anniversary (6 years thank you) and thanks to Grandma being here to babysit and the grain being too green to harvest, we were able to get away for a pretty good dinner at Wingers and finally seeing Avengers.

 At the picnic, some of Robert's cousins decided to try an idea they saw of wrapping rubber bands around a watermelon until it explodes. It took so many rubber bands that they had to run to the store to get more, but we eventually saw the thing explode, as you can see above. It was pretty sweet!

I somehow got nominated to make enough cake for the Smith family reunion/picnic so we decided on Lemon Lover's White Chocolate for the birthday cake and a half sheet of German Chocolate to make sure we had enough for the 40+ people. Robert's best friend, Mitch, also had his birthday on Friday, so I also made him a homemade carrot cake. It was cake mania, let me tell you! The picture above is the only one we got of the birthday cake with the gumpaste flowers.

Then today we have just enjoyed the day with Grandma and Uncle Kurtis. Trixie brought the beloved Cricut along and we spent the afternoon cutting vinyl for all sorts of projects. The picture above is the one we were able to put up tonight. It is an amazing quote I found from Elder Uchdorf and goes perfectly with a craft room in my opinion "The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul" Isn't that fabulous?! Anyways, we did a bunch of other ones, too. You want to know what we did?

 We did this teeny, tiny one for Kaylie's picture frame on our family wall so it kind of explains things simply and kindly. Then we did a new name/address for our mailbox in white outdoor vinyl. Next we redid the "Families are forever" quote in black for my wall because I found a font I liked alot more (sorry, Ashlee!). We did "Laugh as much as you breathe" in chocolate brown for the family room downstairs. "Embrace each day" in a light purple for my dresser mirror. And then my favorites were two quotes for the guest bedroom and bathroom downstairs. "We can't miss you if you won't leave" in blue and "If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie" in navy. It was alot to do in one day, but it was so fun, too. Tomorrow we are hoping to hit up Bear World with Grandma and Uncle Kurtis before they head out and before we have to head to Rexburg for the start of swimming lessons for everyone. Should be a fun two weeks!

Splash Park

 So today we decided to head out to Rexburg to enjoy the splash park. We are really trying to live up the rest of summer and get tons of playtime in with our friends the Potters before they leave for three weeks.

 Unfortunately the weather wasn't the best this morning, so the kids only lasted about half an hour in the water before they were too cold. We like to go do water stuff in the morning before the sun gets too intense, but sometimes it hasn't quite warmed up enough, either. Thankfully they were just as happy to simply play with each other on the grass until we had our picnic lunch.

 Right after this one, Sam slipped and fell into the water, it was super funny!

And I know the shutter is in the way of this one, but look how cute Amy is trying to say "Hi" to Lily :) She can be such a social butterfly at times and yet so shy at others. Of course later today it got nice and hot, so we will be taking advantage of National Ice Cream Sandwich day with Grandma and Uncle Kurtis coming to visit will be a great end to our day as well!

Fishing Bare-handed

 Here are a couple more pictures from the stake pioneer celebration when they let the kids catch full-sized trout with their hands in the man-made pond. Up top is Josh's mommy, aka Aunt Julie now, helping Sam catch his fish once he finally decided he wanted to get one (which he ended up being too chicken to try and grab, so Julie got one for him)

 These two are Matt catching his fish. Poor Matt got so frustrated that "the big one" slipped out of his hands TWICE!

 But he finally did get one

And a quick pic of Daniel loading his catch into a bag to take home and fry.